Victor Gustav Bloede (1849-1937)

Between his birth in Germany and his death eighty-eight years later in Catonsville, Maryland, Victor Bloede became an eminent chemist and the proprietor of his flagship enterprise, the Baltimore-based Victor G. Bloede Company. Bloede was a real-estate developer, a banker, the founder of a construction company, a gentleman farmer, an advocate for issues of public concern, and a generous philanthropist.

The eventful life of Victor Gustav Bloede (born
March 14, 1849 in Dresden, Saxony; died March 27, 1937 in Catonsville, MD) began
amidst the throes of revolution in the Old World and ended peacefully in
affluence and prominence in the New World. Between his birth in Germany and his
death eighty-eight years later in Catonsville, Maryland, Bloede became an
eminent chemist; the proprietor of numerous chemical companies, including his
flagship enterprise, the Baltimore-based Victor G. Bloede Company; a
real-estate developer; a banker; the founder of a construction company, a water
utility, a trolley line, and an electric utility; a gentleman farmer; an
advocate for issues of public concern; a generous philanthropist who donated
both money and time to a wide variety of charities; and a devoted husband,
father, and grandfather. Although Bloede achieved success in a wide variety of
fields, he is best remembered today for his pioneering contributions to
industrial chemistry and chemical engineering. Over the course of his career,
he was granted approximately thirty patents, the most important of which
pertained to the manufacture of starch adhesives and “sun-fast” textile dyes. The
superiority of Bloede’s adhesives was attested to by the U.S. Postal Service,
which awarded him a decades-long commission to provide all the glue used for
postage stamps. His “sun-fast” dyes, which allowed for dyed fabric that would
not fade on exposure to sunlight, won numerous awards and had a profound and
lasting impact on the textile industry.

Victor Gustav Bloede was born in Dresden,
Saxony, on March 14, 1849. He was descended from two well-established
professional families. His paternal grandfather, Carl August Bloede (1773-1820)
had been a chemist and mineralogist (he discovered the mineral bloedite) and an official of the Saxon
Treasury Department.[1]
His maternal grandfather was a judge in Breslau under the Prussian government.[2]

Bloede's father, Gustav (1814-88), was a
lawyer and politician whose liberal inclinations drew him into the tumultuous
events that engulfed Germany in 1848 and 1849. Years later, Victor’s mother,
Marie (née von Sallet) Bloede (1821-70), would tell him, “your lullabies were
the rattle of musketry, and the patter of bullets upon the fronts and roofs of
our and the adjoining houses, all the front windows of which were piled up with
mattresses to keep out the stray bullets."[3] The
fighting to which she referred had been precipitated by a series of events over
the course of roughly a year. In 1848, the pan-German Frankfurt National
Assembly (of which Gustav Bloede was a member)[4] had
come together as an elected body and proposed a liberal constitution for a
united Germany, but their plan depended on the acceptance of an imperial crown
by Prussia's King Frederick William IV. When Frederick William balked, liberals
from various jurisdictions began to agitate for local acceptance of the proposed
constitution to bring it into force, if only in piecemeal fashion.[5]
The Saxon Diet approved the constitution, but King Frederick Augustus II was not
persuaded. In late April 1849, he dismissed the Diet and appointed a conservative
administration. In Dresden, his actions unleashed increasing clamor on behalf
of the constitution, and on May 3, 1849, barricades began to appear in the
streets. The first blood was shed that day when troops at an arsenal fired on
pro-constitutionalists who were attempting to seize arms. Later that night the
alarmed Saxon monarch withdrew from Dresden to a fortress some twenty miles
away. A provisional government was proclaimed the next day, but efforts to
organize a military defense were ineffective. A few days later, the uprising
was crushed by Prussian troops who had been called in by Frederick Augustus II.
The bloodshed was substantial. Clara Schumann, the pianist and composer, passed
through Dresden several times during the conflict, and her diary records the
sight of fourteen dead bodies arrayed in the courtyard of a hospital and
"thousands of holes made by bullets in the houses."[6] Hundreds
were killed in the fighting, hundreds more wounded, and thousands were arrested
for revolutionary activities.[7]

One of those implicated was Gustav Bloede,
who, in addition to being a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly, was also
a member of the Dresden City Council.[8] His
prominence in Dresden was evidenced by a sour comment made by none other than composer
Richard Wagner, who noted that “a certain lawyer named Bloede” was being
honored in the city as a “modern ... Demosthenes.”[9] Wagner
fled Saxony before he could be arrested for his own role in the events in
Dresden, but Gustav Bloede was not so fortunate. He was arrested, charged with
treason, and given a ten-year sentence.[10] Like
thousands of others, however, he was able to escape, and the Bloedes eventually
made their way to the United States in August of 1850.[11]

Gustav Bloede concluded that his legal
training in Germany was of limited use in America, so he decided to study
medicine at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. The family ultimately
settled in Brooklyn, New York, where Dr. Bloede established a practice. To supplement
his income, he also took up journalism, becoming editor of the German-language New Yorker Demokrat; he contributed to
other publications as well.[12] Like
many other German “Forty-Eighters,” Dr. Bloede allied himself with the
Republican Party, and his name turns up from time to time in stories about the reformist
Republican faithful.[13]

Marie Bloede occasionally assisted her
husband’s medical work – an 1861 newspaper advertisement notes that both she
and Dr. Bloede would be in attendance at gymnasium-style orthopedic classes for
ladies[14] –
but she became better known for her artistic undertakings. Marie had grown up
in a cultured and literary family in Breslau. One of her three brothers was the
famous revolutionary poet Friedrich von Sallet (1812-43). During her adulthood
in America, she continued to cultivate the interest in art and literature that
had first developed in Germany during her youth. Under her own name (Marie or
Mary Bloede) or under the pen name Marie Westland, she taught piano, wrote
music, and produced poems, stories, and translations in both German and
English. Evidently, Marie Bloede’s literary activity and warm personality turned
the Bloede household into something of a regular salon for a number of
well-known writers and artists.[15]

In addition to Victor Gustav, the Bloede
family in America included three daughters, Gertrude, Kate, and Indiana.[16]
Unfortunately, their financial situation was far from prosperous. When Dr.
Bloede sought a house in Brooklyn, he chose a large property to allow for
boarders to help with the mortgage;[17] as
late as 1878, Dr. Bloede was still occasionally advertising “a pleasant room
with board for one or two single gentlemen in a strictly private family where German
is spoken.”[18]
Later in life, Victor Gustav Bloede commented that when he began working (at
age eleven or twelve) his intention was to serve as a breadwinner, to make a
contribution to the family finances.[19]
Work did not prevent him from attending school, however. In fact, it was his
work at a photographer’s studio, together with his schooling, that ignited his interest
in chemistry. By 1862, at age thirteen, Bloede was putting on a “wonders of chemistry”
demonstration at his father’s office for other children in his neighborhood. Admission
was twenty-five cents for all four nights or ten cents for a single evening’s
show, and he was reportedly delighted with the revenue his performances generated.[20] He
also impregnated corn cobs with chemicals that caused the cobs to crackle and
ignite in brilliant colors in a fireplace, and he peddled this entertaining
fuel around Brooklyn at a considerable profit.[21]

By the time the ambitious young chemist had
turned fifteen, he was ready to enroll in the Cooper Union for the Advancement
of Science and Art. The Cooper Union was the enduring legacy of Peter Cooper,
the visionary inventor and businessman best known for building “Tom Thumb,” the
first steam engine to run on the first full-scale American railroad, the
Baltimore & Ohio. Despite his immense success as an inventor and
entrepreneur – and his great wealth – Cooper had always felt hampered by his lack
of formal education, and the Union aimed to help ambitious but poor young
students acquire the kind of education that he himself would have liked. Classes
were free of charge, and they were offered at night so that promising
“mechanics” who worked during the day could attend.[22]

The course, which involved a “thorough
system of study, recitation and drill,” was extremely demanding.[23]
For example, during one of Bloede’s years at Cooper Union, 1,571 students enrolled
in evening classes, but only 958 of them made it to the end of the term. Of the
958, only 646 received certificates of course completion, and even fewer
received “first grade” certificates testifying to “superior qualifications” in
the subject matter.[24]
Bloede earned first grade certificates in each of the three courses he is known
to have taken (elementary chemistry, analytical chemistry, and organic chemistry).[25]

By the time Bloede completed his studies at
Cooper Union in 1867, the foundation had been laid for his long and
distinguished career as a chemist. It is also important to note, however, that
his experience at the Union provided him with an influential role model for
other aspects of his later life – Peter Cooper himself. Cooper was a constant
presence at Cooper Union throughout Bloede’s years there,[26]
and the two were personally acquainted. Years later, Bloede cited Cooper as the
model for many of his own endeavors in life, and there are indeed striking
parallels in their careers as inventors, as businessmen in a variety of types
of enterprises, as participants in debates on public issues, and as philanthropists.[27]

Since the Bloede family was not in a
position to help Victor Gustav at the outset of his professional career, he had
to proceed solely on the basis of ingenuity and hard work. He found employment
quickly – first as an assistant instructor at Cooper Union, then at a chemical
plant in Brooklyn[28]
– but it was two other remarkable accomplishments that clearly demonstrated
Bloede’s capable and enterprising nature.

The first accomplishment was Bloede’s first
patent, issued in February 1867, when the youthful inventor had not yet turned eighteen.
The patent (Letters Patent No. 61,991) covered the production of a white gum, or
glue, from wheat starch by treating the starch with nitric and hydrochloric acids.
The patent was the first of many that Bloede would receive for his work in
starch chemistry. The gum was suitable for mounting photographs, but it also
had other uses in offices and commercial establishments. Subsequent advertising
for “Bloede’s Mucilage” noted that it “wouldn’t sour and stink the place up”
but would “stick like a poor relation and keep in all climates.”[29]
Bloede sold the patent rights to Columbia Chemical Works of Brooklyn for $500.00
plus a 5% royalty on the profits. In light of Bloede’s age, his father had to
countersign the contract.[30]

The second accomplishment came just two
months later, in May 1867, when Bloede published The Reducer's Manual and Gold and Silver Worker’s Guide in New York
and London.[31]
Bloede had just turned eighteen when the work appeared, and the 165-page publication
is extraordinary for someone so young. Building on his work in the photography
studio and on his academic training (the book is dedicated to his professor at Cooper
Union), The Reducer’s Manual offers extensive
practical guidance on recovering valuable metals from spent photographic
materials in an era when photographers routinely handled chemicals in preparing
emulsions for photographic plates and in processing images in their darkrooms.

The book betrays the marks of youth: it is
occasionally preachy, the author's infatuation with his own learning is
unmistakable in his critique of the course of alchemy during the Middle Ages,
and the overwriting is occasionally spectacular. For the most part, however, the
book provides down-to-earth, step-by-step descriptions of processes by which a
photographer interested in controlling costs could recover and re-use expensive
chemicals. It is unclear how much Bloede earned from this publication, but it
appears to have circulated widely, and it certainly contributed to his
professional reputation.

Over the next several years, the young
chemist worked for several chemical companies in Brooklyn and entered into a
partnership to manufacture photographic chemicals.[32] He
also took out several new patents. Not every youthful enthusiasm yielded
success, however. For example, a wintergreen farm that he purchased to supply a
particular raw material to pharmaceutical companies seems to have come to
nothing,[33]
and Bloede later recalled at least one failed chemical process that blew the
roof off a building where he worked.[34] Nonetheless,
the young chemist acquired experience and broadened the scope of his ambitions.

In 1873, Bloede moved to Pomeroy, Ohio.[35] The
area was a center for salt production from salt springs, and one waste product
of the process was water rich in dissolved minerals, particularly bromine. Bloede
became a small-scale bromine producer. He also became a consultant to Oakes
& Rathbone, a firm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, that produced sulfuric
acid for bromine distillers. By 1875, the firm had become Bloede &
Rathbone. Since Bloede had sold his bromine to German manufacturers of aniline dyes,
he came into contact with American textile manufacturers who purchased German
dyes. As a result, Bloede & Rathbone decided to build upon Bloede's
chemistry expertise to extend their product line into various basic chemicals
used widely in the textile industry.

Evidently, Bloede and Rathbone were able to
sell their basic chemicals profitably. Still, they knew that aniline dyes – which
had begun to revolutionize cloth dyeing in the 1850s, but which were still
generally available only from German or English firms – offered much higher
profit margins. Thus, “the idea suggested itself that our firm might make millions
by taking up the manufacture of aniline and aniline dyes, and we at once
proceeded to develop this project.”[36]

The “millions” Bloede anticipated proved
elusive. Neither Bloede nor Rathbone knew much about the aniline dye business,
and they faced numerous difficulties in mastering the necessary processes. First,
where to find an adequate supply of “light oils”? These were a waste product of
coal tar distilleries and gas plants, and not every such facility was willing
to go through the trouble of putting the oil in barrels for young Bloede and
his partner.

Second, the oil itself – once acquired –
was a highly heterogeneous mixture of a wide variety of chemical species, only
one of which, benzene, was needed for the aniline process. To address the
problem of benzene extraction, Bloede and Rathbone turned to James A. Moffett,
an executive with Standard Oil in Parkersburg and an expert in the distillation
of crude oil. Moffett became the third investor, along with Bloede and Rathbone,
in American Aniline Works, and he also provided expertise in benzene extraction.
Moreover, he gave the fledgling firm access to a Standard Oil junk pile
containing salvageable parts that could be used to cobble together a processing
facility. The firm repurposed an old boiler shell into a nitrator, the device
in which benzene would be mixed with nitric acid to form nitrobenzene. Bloede
was apprehensive about using a device ten times the size recommended by German
texts on aniline processes, but Moffett insisted on attempting large-scale production
from the outset.

The matter was compromised by erecting our boiler nitrator in
a deep gulley somewhat remote from what was to be the central plant, the cock
controlling the flow of acid to the nitrator being operated by a wire from a
distance of several hundred feet. A thermometer was inserted through the shell of
the old boiler [which was cooled by spring water running over it], and it was
the duty of a solitary operator from time to time to dash sufficiently close to
read the scale and then immediately to sprint back to safety. I will never forget
the morning the first charge was made in this huge nitrator, the operation of
which I, as the chief chemist of the enterprise, was to impart to the operator
as well as supervise – a job which I regarded with the utmost concern. I have
often since admired the courage of ignorance which makes such trials possible,
for this crude apparatus was the only one the American Aniline Works ever put
up which functioned properly and economically....[37]

The partners eventually succeeded in
turning their hard-won nitrobenzene into a trickle of aniline – only to
discover that their product was of limited value because “there was practically
no market for aniline oil in the United States and certainly not at prices that
would enable us to compete with the German product.”[38]

Undaunted, the three partners resolved to
turn their aniline – a feedstock for the manufacture of textile dyes – into the
dyes themselves. However, the procedures for making aniline dyes were closely
guarded by the German and English companies that had developed them. Bloede,
Rathbone, and Moffett had scoured the scientific and commercial literature for
information on aniline before beginning their operations, but they soon
realized how little practical information was available from works whose titles
Bloede jokingly recalled as The Entire
Art of Aniline Color Manufacturing in a Nutshell or Every Man HisOwn Aniline
Color Maker.[39]
Therefore, they sought an English or German consultant who could assist them.

After posting an advertisement in England,
they recruited a correspondent with the appropriate credentials. However, all
he furnished to the trio was a manifesto that “appeared at first sight to be
copies of Babylonian tablets from the British Museum, consisting mainly of page
upon page of figures and groups of squares and circles, which he advised us
were the chemical formulas involved in the processes of manufacture. We had no
reason at that time to doubt the gentleman's veracity, but to us these hieroglyphics
were as meaningless as the inscription on Cleopatra's needle....”[40]

The partners’ German advertisement was also
a spectacular failure. It ran once in a trade publication and resulted in the publisher
of the paper being charged with conspiracy to obtain trade secrets. “What
finally became of the poor publisher of the paper we never learned, but the
amount we had paid in advance for the advertisement was confiscated, and we
were warned that a life sentence in a German ‘Zuchthaus’ awaited any member of
our firm who was caught trying to enter the German domain."[41]

There was nothing to do but return to the
scant, secretive literature on aniline dyes and scan it for clues that might
lead to a useful product. The firm was able to produce fuchsin (also called
fuchsine or magenta), which is used as a dye and disinfectant, and the company
continued to sell its basic aniline oil, but attempts to produce other colors
were abortive.

It is hardly necessary to add the humiliating admission that
the enterprise was not a profitable one. We simply carried it along because we
did not want to give it up, our faith still being strong that somewhere along
the line millions could be unearthed.[42]

But if American Aniline Works was a
disappointment, then Bloede & Rathbone’s basic operations were apparently much
more successful. The works were rebuilt with borrowed money after a disastrous
fire in 1877,[43]
and the firm eventually grew to employ some 300 workers.[44] However,
it only lasted until 1884, when another disaster – a catastrophic flood of the
Little Kanawha River – swept it all away.[45]

Rather than rebuild a second time, Bloede
moved to Baltimore, where he had previously established the Caton Manufacturing
Company. As with his earlier bromine and aniline operations, Caton was built on
a waste product – Bloede made ink from the carbon black that was disposed of by
other Baltimore industries.[46]

Soon enough, however, the Caton Manufacturing
Company was dwarfed by a multiplicity of additional enterprises that Bloede
spawned, beginning with the company to which he devoted the bulk of his time
for the rest of his life. This was the Victor G. Bloede Company, established on
land that Bloede bought in southwest Baltimore. The firm – “Manufacturing
Chemists” – used the slogan “Manufactured under Chemical Control.” It is not
clear how many hands the firm had, but the laboratory alone employed a staff of
five in addition to Bloede himself,[47]
and at least eight large buildings were erected on the site. Some of these were
used by the Bloede firm, but some were occasionally leased to large customers
who used Bloede products.[48] Additionally,
trade journals noted that major expansions were made to the facility in 1916
and 1930.[49]
The Bloede Company or the affiliated Caton Manufacturing Company continued to
produce the ink that had originally brought Bloede to Baltimore, but his
product line grew over time, and several subsidiaries were established to
encompass the full range of the firm’s activities. For example, an entry for a
1917 trade show exhibition mentions not just the Bloede Company, but its subsidiaries
as well:

The firm also produced sizings and
starches.[51]
None of its products was aimed at individual consumers, however; the target
audience was large-scale enterprises – the U.S. government or manufacturers of
paper, stationery products, cardboard products, furniture, plywood, and
textiles. The firm employed its own salesmen, but it also used sales agencies
that represented multiple firms.[52] The
energetic and personable Bloede was active in making contacts through
chemistry-related technical associations, and the firm exhibited at trade shows
devoted to the various industries served by the Victor G. Bloede Company.

Throughout the firm’s existence, however, its
success depended on the technical insight of its founder, as reflected in the patents
he secured for a variety of products and processes over the years. During the 1880s
and 1890s, dyes and textile processes dominated his work. Thereafter, he made
noteworthy contributions to the field in which his first patent was granted,
the development of starch-derived adhesives.

Bloede’s development of sun-fast dyes based
on mineral pigments offers interesting insights into the scientific method. Bloede’s
work with textiles led cotton producers to contact him about removing stains
from “sanded cotton” – cotton bolls that had been stained when they fell on the
ground prior to harvest. Bloede came to compare the problem to “the rusty nail
problem” because the stains from iron-rich soils were essentially the same as
the stain left on a cloth from contact with a rusty nail. Bloede never solved
the original problem, but the tenacious stains made him realize that there was
something in the crystalline structure of the iron compound that fastened it
mechanically to the cotton fiber – and that a dye utilizing this property would
be as irremovable as rust stains. A series of subsequent experiments led to the
discovery of a variety of compounds of various metals (iron, manganese,
aluminum, chromium, and silicon) that adhered tenaciously to textile fibers. Furthermore,
when these compounds were mixed with certain dyes, the metallic compounds
appeared to bind both to the textile fiber and to the dye. The result was dyed
fabric that would not fade on exposure to sunlight.[53] Bloede
patented the discovery in 1888 (Letters Patent No. 394,446)[54]
and received medals for his accomplishment (Exposition Universelle, Paris,
1889; World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; Franklin Institute, 1894).[55] By
1894, a million yards of sun-fast fabric was being produced annually.[56] Some
forty years later, Bloede noted with satisfaction that the process “gave rise to
a very profitable industry [that is] still flourishing.”[57]

Of the thirty patents known to have been
issued to Bloede, eleven related to starch-based adhesives – gums and glues. These
starch-based products gradually displaced natural gums (e.g., Gum Arabic) and animal-derived
glues (such as those manufactured by Peter Cooper) in binding books,
manufacturing envelopes, and making furniture and plywood. Bloede's first
patent (1867) was the first U.S. patent relating to the production of an
adhesive from a starch base.[58] He
was granted numerous additional patents (1895, 1916, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921) in
the area of starch-based adhesives and became widely recognized as an expert. His
talks before trade groups were sometimes reprinted as pamphlets for wider circulation.[59] In
1928, when a massive technical work entitled A Comprehensive Survey of Starch Chemistry was published,[60] it
featured a chapter by Bloede that was still regarded as an excellent survey of
the topic a decade later.[61] When
a review article about starch adhesives appeared in Chemical and Engineering News in 1944, only two of 147 inventors
named in a list of relevant patent holders had more patents than Bloede.[62]

Perhaps the greatest compliment Bloede's
adhesives ever received, however, was the practical approval of the U.S. Post
Office, which gave him a decades-long commission to provide all the glue used
for postage stamps. Bloede was pleased to be known as “the man who makes the
stamps stick,”[63]
and the factory crew that turned out as many as a million pounds of glue per
year adopted the slogan “Licked By All Yet Licked By None.”[64]

The Victor G. Bloede Company may have been Bloede’s
flagship enterprise, but he was also involved in numerous other undertakings,
most of which centered around Catonsville, Maryland, a rural community in
Baltimore County roughly nine miles west of the center of Baltimore City. When
Bloede settled in Catonsville, residents of downtown Baltimore knew the town primarily
as the site of the cottages to which they retreated during the summer heat.[65] But
Bloede envisioned a commuter community of permanent residents who enjoyed the
conveniences of city living in a suburban setting. Since those conveniences
were lacking when Bloede arrived, he arranged for them himself. During the five
decades that he lived in the area, Bloede provided the community with
real-estate development, a trolley line, a water system, electricity, and a
bank.

When Bloede settled in Catonsville, he
founded Eden Construction Company (1892), a real-estate development company
that sub-divided his seventy-two-acre property and developed year-round houses.[66] Fifty-six
lots were laid off at “Eden Terrace.” Bloede's company built some houses, but
he also sold lots to others who wished to build their own houses.[67] Several
members of Bloede's family wound up living in Eden Terrace, but others
unconnected to Bloede settled in the attractive development as well. The neighborhood
still exists today, although part of it was demolished in the 1950s during the construction
of the Baltimore Beltway (I-695).[68]

The centerpiece of the development was “Arden,”
Bloede's own home. In 1883, while on a business trip to Toledo, Ohio, Bloede
had met Elise Schon. Like Bloede, she was the child of parents who had emigrated
from Germany to America.[69] They
were married in 1883, and their five children grew up at Arden. The house was
designed by Bloede’s father-in-law.[70] The
imposing structure featured a tower at one corner, a drive-through portico
before the front door, wrap-around porches highlighted by ornamental woodwork,
and a variety of roofs over different sections of the house. A 1995 writer
described the house as “bizarre,” but it no doubt represented the height of
Victorian fashion when it was constructed.[71] When
the house burned down in 1922,[72] Bloede
built a much less distinctive but equally impressive replacement structure. When
developers threatened Bloede’s second house in 2008, the local community
responded with protest. Unfortunately, efforts at landmark preservation failed,[73]
and the home was demolished in 2011.[74]

When transportation between Catonsville and
another rural town farther west became an issue, Bloede joined others to found
the Edmonson Avenue, Catonsville and Ellicott City Electric Railway Company
(1892) to connect with a trolley line running west from the center of Baltimore
City toward Catonsville.[75] Bloede’s
name also became associated with other efforts to transform nascent electric
trolley systems in urban centers into city-to-city systems.[76] It
appears, however, that little came from these efforts. Bloede’s involvement in
his own local system also brought him into the public arena as an advocate for lower
fares on the Baltimore-Catonsville trolley.[77]

As the population of the Catonsville area
grew, Bloede joined with other local businessmen to found the First National
Bank of Catonsville (1897). The initial capitalization was $50,000
(approximately $1.36 million in 2010)[78]. Bloede
served as director or president, or both, for most of the rest of his life. The
bank headquarters building still stands in Catonsville.[79]

When electricity became common in other
areas, “the people of the Catonsville section of Baltimore County were
constantly agitating for the question of securing electric lighting [ . . . ].”[80] However,
they were unsuccessful. Electric utilities were still developing their networks,
and they generally favored densely populated areas over relatively low-density
areas like Catonsville or the undeveloped expanses of western Baltimore City. In
his typical fashion, Bloede met the need head on, joining forces with several
others to found the Patapsco Electric and Manufacturing Company (1900). The firm
built a generating plant on the Patapsco River, west of Catonsville.[81] Several
years later it built a “submarine plant” elsewhere on the Patapsco to generate hydroelectric
power.[82] This
dam – subsequently known as Bloede's Dam – was an engineering sensation when it
was constructed, and Bloede was rightly proud of it:

[The dam is] unique in the annals of hydraulic engineering,
in that it is hollow, forming a chamber or tunnel underneath the bed of the
river, in which the entire machinery and power development is located. At the
time of its erection, we believe, it was the first of its kind in the world,
and as stated, a new departure in hydraulic engineering. It has been described and
illustrated in many scientific and engineering journals, both in this country
and Europe, and many noted hydraulic engineers from all parts of the world have
visited it as representing one of the wonders of progress in modern power
development.[83]

The innovative dam generated power until
1924, when it was mothballed, but it has remained a featured landmark along
hiking trails established by a state park in the area. The dam still existed in
early 2012, although plans were being made to demolish the structure to re-open
the river to fish migrations.[84]

Although his electric company was merely a
sideline, it absorbed Bloede for years in a public battle with the government
of the City of Baltimore and the city’s major gas-electric utility. Because the
Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company of Baltimore did not provide electric
service in the western reaches of the city when Patapsco Electric began
operating across the city line in the county, Patapsco started stringing wires
into the city around 1903. The operation was apparently approved by city
officials, but without a formal charter awarded by the city government. When the
Consolidated objected to competition in their exclusive territory, Bloede
purchased rights under an existing but moribund charter granted years before to
an earlier Consolidated competitor. Payments to the owners of the earlier
charter forced Patapsco to increase its charges for its power, and although Bloede
disliked the legal subterfuge, the arrangement gave Patapsco a bridgehead from
which it might expand if the city government ever allowed competition within
the city.

The wrangling over the “Bloede ordinance” went
on for years – it was conducted in newspapers, before the state Public Service
Commission, in the state legislature, and in the Baltimore City Council. Bribery
was alleged, one city councilman denounced a colleague as a liar during a public
meeting, and at one point a grand jury looked into various accusations.[85] Bloede’s
contribution to the debate was a twenty-two-page pamphlet in which he denounced
the Consolidated and pointed to the lower-cost energy that Patapsco promised to
deliver.

Lower prices through competition may have
been attractive, but the city was apprehensive. Years earlier, Baltimore had
repeatedly had its streets and alleys torn up by several small gas and electric
utilities operating in the same geographic areas, and the city had fostered the
merger of the competing outfits into the Consolidated to end the disruptions. Furthermore,
Bloede had to contend with the fact that the established utility naturally had
a number of well-established, politically influential supporters.[86]
The “Bloede ordinance” was never passed, and eventually Bloede had to admit
defeat. He sold the Patapsco to the Consolidated in 1913 for $425,000[87]
(approximately $9.65 million in 2010).

With regard to other essential services: Bloede
provided water for his Eden Terrace development from a spring on the property,[88] but
water service in the larger Catonsville/West Baltimore area was inadequate. Consequently,
in 1910 Bloede established the Avalon Waterworks along the Patapsco River to
provide water to parts of Baltimore City and Baltimore and Howard counties.[89]

Bloede enjoyed nature more than one might
expect of someone raised in Brooklyn, and the farm he bought in 1912 was an
expression of that sentiment. The property was located in Anne Arundel County, some seventeen miles
from Catonsville, and it was an actual working farm. Tobacco was a major crop,
and there were horses, cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep, and pigs as well. Bloede
never worked the farm himself – that was left to resident farmhands – but he
and one of his sons oversaw activity on the property. Additionally, Bloede and
other members of his family visited the farm frequently to help with farm
chores as a form of recreation. The property was held by the family until it
was swallowed up during the expansion of nearby Fort Meade during World War II.[90]

Not everything that Bloede touched was a
success. An exclusive association with a textile firm in Wilmington, Delaware,
that gave great currency to Bloede's sun-fast dyes dissolved into acrimony,
recriminations, and mutual lawsuits.[91] In
addition, there were occasional legal tangles of the type encountered by anyone
involved in managing a large and active business.

One particular legal predicament deserves
notice, however, since it represented the greatest embarrassment Bloede ever endured.
In 1908, he was indicted along with a U.S. Treasury Department employee and
charged with paying kickbacks to the employee on a contract for ink used to print
currency.[92]
The indictment sprang from a 1901 arrangement whereby the Treasury Department
employee – in Bloede's account – assisted Bloede in compounding improved black
ink. When the employee asked Bloede for compensation for work done on his own
time, Bloede demurred, explaining that the Secretary of the Treasury had to
approve the royalty. Bloede subsequently insisted that the then-secretary had
indeed approved the arrangement; for his part, the Treasury Department employee
claimed to have recused himself from the competition in which Bloede won the
ink contract.

The indictment generated unpleasant
headlines when the arrangement was exposed several years later.[93] Bloede
and the Treasury employee both initially pleaded not guilty, but both
subsequently changed their pleas to a reduced charge, and each paid a substantial
fine – in Bloede's case, with five new $1,000 bills[94] ($5,000
in 1908 is equivalent to roughly $122,000 in 2010). Bloede and his lawyer both
gave newspaper interviews in which they insisted that the matter had amounted
to a mere technical violation of the law[95] –
and perhaps they had even convinced themselves of that. The inappropriateness
of the arrangement, however, is manifest, particularly given the fact that
Bloede's payments to the Treasury Department employee had apparently amounted
to some $25,000. Bloede's uncharacteristic involvement in such an affair seems
even more bizarre in light of the fact that he himself had been a principal
complainant only a few years earlier (1897) when corrupt Post Office officials
had cheated him out of a contract for ink used to produce postmarks.[96]

The case nagged at Bloede, and he even
returned to it nearly twenty years later, asking a prosecutor to acknowledge that
the incident had involved no moral turpitude on his part. For his trouble,
Bloede received an indulgent letter acknowledging that there was at least an
argument to be made for Bloede’s point of view. Whether Bloede’s conscience was
salved by the review is unclear.[97]

The guilty plea may have bothered Bloede,
but the rest of the world seemed to attribute little significance to it. Shortly
after Bloede paid his fine, a civic celebration in honor of one of his
charitable endeavors was attended by virtually every business and civic leader
in Baltimore whose opinion might have mattered to him. With his legal
difficulties behind him, Bloede resumed his customary role as a respected business
and community leader and served as such until his death in Catonsville in 1937.
His widow inherited his interest in the Victor G. Bloede Company, which had
affiliated with Le Page’s Glue in 1930; stock in Bloede’s other enterprises was
left to his children.[98] The
Bloede Company continued to operate in Baltimore for several decades after
Bloede’s death, first as part of LePage’s, later as a division of National
Starch. In 2012, new construction covered part of the Bloede manufacturing site
in southwest Baltimore; the remainder reveals only the foundations of some of
Bloede’s former buildings, now overgrown with vegetation.[99]

Victor Gustav Bloede’s social status can best
be understood by examining the five overlapping worlds in which he lived – family,
business, science, public affairs, and community.

The five children born to Victor and Elise
Bloede – Marie (born 1884), Carl S. (1885), Ilse (1888), Victor (1894), and
Vida (1896) – were raised at Arden, in Catonsville. The elegantly landscaped
estate afforded ample room for play and exploration, and included, among other
highlights, a grand view of the Maryland countryside from the building’s tower,
ponds for swimming or ice-skating, horses and donkeys for riding, a tennis
court, and a grand piano in a music room. A staff of governesses, household
servants, and a gardener tended to the family and the property.[100] The
family traveled widely, both domestically and abroad, and their comings and goings
were frequently noted in local newspapers.[101]

The children were educated by European
governesses and in private schools. The boys attended university (MIT, Lehigh, and
the University of Maryland) and wound up working for various Bloede
enterprises. Interestingly, each son married a secretary that he met at the
Victor G. Bloede Company. Marie married William W. Woollcott, a noted Baltimore
raconteur and member of H.L. Mencken’s famous Saturday Night Club. The couple
settled at Eden Terrace, and Woollcott worked for his father-in-law's firm. Ilse,
who never married, spent several years in Europe studying music, and later
appeared on stage in New York. In later years, she engaged in charitable work
in New York and Baltimore. Vida married a son of one of the “big four”
physicians who founded Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital; when she later
divorced, she operated an apple orchard and cider mill on the farm her father
had given her as a wedding present.[102]

One granddaughter, Barbara Woollcott,
penned an affectionate – although somewhat exaggerated – description of her Gopapa:

[He] was the old-fashioned, pioneer, rags-to-riches type of businessman,
who was supporting his mother and countless younger brothers and sisters at
eleven, was a struggling junior executive at fifteen, and well on his way to
being a wealthy and important personage by the time he was twenty [ . . . ]. A
kind of aura of respectability and position breathed out from him wherever he
went. Business associates recognized it. Waiters, though they might never have
seen him before, scurried to give him the best of everything. So did porters on
trains, redcaps in stations. Even his family bowed, from time to time, to his
respectability."[103]

Bloede’s family held him in obvious esteem
but also played to his sense of humor. When he brought his children and
grandchildren together for a holiday on Martha's Vineyard, and the various family
units wore on each other's nerves, Bloede began to refer to the vacation
property as “House of Shattered Dreams.” The family responded by ordering
stationery for Bloede with that inscription printed at the top.[104] When
he insisted that his grandchildren speak German at meals, they responded by
casting their comments as quotations from English-speaking neighbors.[105] When
Bloede once impulsively promised a generous bonus to the grandchild who
produced his first great-grandchild, one granddaughter asked, “Does it have to
be legitimate?”[106]

Bloede’s connections in the business world
developed gradually. Hisfirst
entrepreneurial ventures were his New York business for photography-related
chemicals and his bromine operation in Pomeroy, Ohio, both of which were small undertakings
that he financed through his earnings as a chemist in Brooklyn, his profits
from various patent licenses (he held five patents by the time he went to
Pomeroy), and royalties from The
Reducer’s Manual. Presumably, he was initially a minority partner in Bloede
& Rathbone, becoming a principal at least as much for his expertise as for the
capital he contributed. In order to rebuild their facility after the 1877 fire,
Bloede sought loans from capitalists in New York and Boston.[107]
Apparently, the success that Bloede & Rathbone experienced in the period
between 1877 and the flood of 1884 convinced these financiers that Bloede’s
subsequent ventures were also worthy of investment: the names of New Yorkers,
Bostonians, and Baltimoreans turn up frequently as minority investors in Bloede’s
numerous undertakings after his move to Baltimore.[108] Bloede
certainly cultivated those connections, participating with other businessmen in
joint economic-development activities[109] and
occasionally taking a minority position or a directorship in enterprises headed
by others.[110]
His work as a banker in Catonsville contributed to his visibility in the
Baltimore business community. In those businesses noted above, however, Bloede
himself was generally the principal investor, financing most of his operations
with his own (by now considerable) resources.

Bloede’s chemistry was not theoretical: he
was the producer of commercial products, not an academic researcher. Yet he was
also a respected and active participant in the broader chemistry community. The
laboratory in his southwest Baltimore plant was staffed by a number of chemists,
and Bloede himself was in the lab until only a few days before his death. He was
a founding member of The Chemists’ Club of New York (1898), and occasionally an
officer.[111]
In 1916, he joined the American Chemical Society, which published an admiring
profile of him in one of its journals in 1926.[112] He
was among a delegation of American chemists invited to England in 1905 by the
British Society of Chemical Industry.[113] His
eminence in starch chemistry has been noted above, and his insights and
accomplishments were such that even academic researchers welcomed his
acquaintance and were regular correspondents.

Perhaps because of his father’s work as a
political journalist, Bloede demonstrated an early interest in public affairs:
for instance, when Bloede was only thirteen, he and his sisters sent
congratulations to Abraham Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation. In
maturity, Bloede was mentioned as a potential political candidate on at least
one occasion,[114]
but he had no apparent interest in elective politics. He did, however, speak out
regularly on public issues. His battle with the Baltimore city government over
the Patapsco Electric and Manufacturing Company has been noted above. Additionally,
from time to time, he joined with other manufacturers to provide testimony to
various tariff commissions and committees.[115] When
gasoline was introduced as “the poor man’s fuel” and gasoline-fueled kitchen
stoves experienced a brief period of popularity, Bloede stepped forward as an
expert on hazardous substances to denounce these dangerous appliances.[116] A
1911 trip to Mexico resulted in newspaper stories that quoted Bloede’s
assessment of the revolution underway in that country.[117] When
self-appointed patriots began hunting for disloyal German-Americans at the
start of World War I, Bloede forcefully dismissed their efforts in public denunciations
of the militaristic, autocratic homeland that had once threatened his father
and driven Bloede himself to America.[118]

Bloede’s various business enterprises were
aimed at meeting the needs of his community, including both his customers and
his neighbors. But he also realized that the community’s needs could not always
be met through business undertakings, and, for this reason, he eventually
became known as much for his charitable donations as for his business activities.

In the 1890s, Bloede acquired a plot of
ground near Catonsville and founded the Hollywood Children’s Summer Home, a
place where children from densely packed Baltimore row house neighborhoods could
enjoy several weeks of summer camp. Staff ran the camp, but Bloede visited
regularly, bringing toys and his younger children with him. He also staged annual
amateur theatricals as fundraisers, frequently casting himself and his wife in
leading roles in farces, at least one of which he wrote himself.[119]

Tuberculosis – “the white plague” – had
scourged mankind since ancient times, but medical advances in the late
nineteenth century had led to the widespread introduction of sanatoria that
treated victims and limited the spread of the infection. At the start of the
twentieth century, Bloede was recruited to a committee of leading citizens to
develop a sanatorium for Baltimore. With characteristic thoroughness, he
researched the design and management of an appropriate facility,[120]
and with characteristic generosity he donated $25,000 toward the construction
of a hospital building. The Marie Bloede Memorial Hospital opened in 1908. It
was named for Bloede’s mother, who had herself died of tuberculosis in 1870 at
age fifty.[121]
The dedication ceremony was attended by the governor of Maryland, the mayor of
Baltimore, and a constellation of civic leaders.[122] Bloede’s
involvement with the institution ended only with his death: a chronicler of the
facility notes that “Mr. Bloede spent as much time [there] as he possibly could
[ . . . ] and was a frequent visitor to the wards and rooms to talk to the
patients and watch over their well being.”[123]

In 1914, Bloede donated his childhood home to
the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities as a base for social work with the blind. The
home became the Marie Bloede Memorial Workshops for the Blind. He also bought
and donated the house next door. Later, he bought a summer camp for the group,
and he regularly attended meetings of the board that governed activities at these
facilities.[124]

In 1916, Bloede endowed The Chemists’ Club
of New York with $10,000 (approximately $205,000 in 2010) to establish a
scholarship for students in industrial chemistry or chemical engineering, the two
fields in which Bloede made his career.[125]
Five years later, in 1921, Bloede demonstrated his gratitude to Peter Cooper by
donating a chemistry laboratory and equipment to Cooper Union.[126]
In 1923, Bloede became the largest contributor to the West Baltimore General
Hospital, which was founded to meet the needs of the growing population of the
western sections of Baltimore City and the Catonsville area. He also served as
the hospital’s first president.[127]

There is little doubt that Victor Gustav Bloede
would have led a successful life had he grown up in Germany. His parents certainly
would have provided as thorough an education for their only son in Germany as
that which he acquired through the generosity of Peter Cooper in America – and,
given Germany’s preeminence in chemistry in the late nineteenth century, his German
education in his chosen field would likely have been superior to the one he
acquired in the United States. Whether his abilities would have been so amply
rewarded financially in Germany is an open question.

But it is pointless to speculate about
whether things might have turned out differently, especially given the fact that
they actually turned out so well. The financial circumstances of Bloede’s American
childhood might have been strained, but he profited from the example of his
immigrant parents. Just as his parents had dared to seek out new lives for themselves
in the New World, Bloede had no fear of transplanting himself when opportunity
demanded it – to Ohio, to West Virginia, to Maryland. Just as his father had accepted
the necessity of transforming himself from lawyer to doctor to journalist, and
just as his mother realized that she needed to expand her literary work beyond
her native tongue, Bloede knew that he had to undertake whatever activity
seemed necessary to accomplish his goals – whether it was clerking in an
office, studying, working as a chemist, or engaging as a businessman in a
variety of fields. And finally, just as his parents had established themselves
in a social circle drawn from a wider world than their Brooklyn neighborhood – political,
literary, artistic – Bloede was open to collaboration with a variety of others.
From a very early age, his ability to accomplish difficult and complex tasks
defined his role in society, and his technical insights and organizational
ability brought him financial rewards that he used for the benefit not just of
his family but of the various communities to which he belonged. His name is
little remembered today except by specialists in his particular fields of
chemistry and by residents of Catonsville, but he did well not only for himself
but also for the many who were touched by his energy and ability.

[16] Victor Gustav
Bloede’s three sisters were: first, Gertrude, born in 1845 in Dresden. She
never married. She became a well-regarded poet before her death in 1905,
publishing widely in hardcover, in newspapers, and in literary journals,
generally under the nom de plume of
Stuart Sterne. One of her works – Pero Da
Castiglione (Houghton, Mifflin, 1890) – is dedicated to her brother. Second,
Kate, born in 1846 in Dresden. She married the painter Abbott H. Thayer, some
of whose best-known works feature his wife and their three children. Kate died
in 1891. Third, Indiana Bloede, born in 1854 in New
York. She married Samuel Thomas King, a doctor, and they lived in Brooklyn and
on Long Island. She died in 1936. For further information on the Bloede
sisters, see Bloede, The Journey,
64-119.

[75]Laws of the State of Maryland Made and
Passed at a Session of the General Assembly Begun and Held at the City of
Annapolis on the Sixth Day of January, 1892, and Ended on the Fourth Day of
April, 1892 [volume 397 of the Archives
of Maryland] (Annapolis, MD: C.H. Baughman & Co., State Printers,
1892), 461-65.

[78] All current values
(in 2010 USD) are based on Samuel H. Williamson, “Seven Ways to Compute the
Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present,” MeasuringWorth, 2011, using the Consumer Price
Index.

[80] Victor G. Bloede, To His Honor, James H. Preston Mayor and the
Honorable City Council of the City of Baltimore: A Short History of the
Patapsco Electric and Mfg. Co. — WHAT
IT IS, WHAT IT HAS ACCOMPLISHED, WHAT IT IS ASKING, WHAT IT PROMISES TO DO (Baltimore,
MD: The Patapsco Electric and Mfg. Co., 1912),3.

[81] “Howard County: Important
Enterprise Projected At The Old Gray’s Factory,” BaltimoreSun, March 11,
1901, 9; and “ELECTRIC LIGHTING: New Plant Put Into Operation At Ellicott
City,” BaltimoreSun, April 27, 1902, 9.

[92]
An excellent
summary of the case can be found in the ruling delivered in a related lawsuit, Lewis v. Bloede, which appears in TheFederal Reporter, volume 202 (St. Paul, MN: West
Publishing Company, 1913), 7-25.

[96]Memorandum of the President and Report of
Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General J.L. Bristow on the Investigation of Certain Divisions of the Post-Office Department
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 13-19.

[108] For example, see
the notice of the incorporation of the Caton Manufacturing Company in TheAmerican
Stationer (January 17, 1895): 103, and the notice about the Patapsco
Electric and Manufacturing Company in the Baltimore
Sun (“Howard County – Important Enterprise Projected at the Old Gray’s
Factory”), March 11, 1901, 9.

[115] For examples, see
“The Tariff Commission,” New York Times,
July 27, 1882, 2; and United States Congress, House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means, Tariff
Hearings Before the Committee on Ways and Means, SixtiethCongress, 1908-1909, volume IV
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), 4273.

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